Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona weighed in during his plenary when asked what he says to smokers insisting as Americans that they have the freedom to do as they wish. He agreed people had the right to smoke but not the right to ask others to pay their health care bills when they develop emphysema, bronchitis and lung cancer.

In one of many chilling graphs, Putnam charted the poor’s decline in high school sports participation. He said “pay to play” policies have priced out poor families and reduced student job readiness, because sports teaches “soft skills” like grit and teamwork.

We’ve decided, Putnam said, that air bags will deploy for a few while the collective absorbs the full, blunt impact.

Conversely, Putnam said a turn-of-the-century decision in rural America to invent high school unleashed the American industrial juggernaut.

“It was the secret to the American Century,” Putnam said.

Putnam said our country moves through “we” and “I” periods. America fared better in “we” cycles when opportunity reached more people.

Political pollster and analyst John Zogby said his data suggested millennials would buck the current “I” society trend.

Millennials prefer “communitarianism” to libertarianism and have little patience for hierarchy, Zogby said. This generation, he said, received trophies regardless of achievement in youth sports. Though some consider that a vice, it has bloomed into the virtue of believing every person matters.

“They give me hope,” Zogby said.

An African proverb, “Because I am, we are, and because we are, I am,” is instructive here.

As great as Alger and the Marlboro Man were, and as enduring as those mythic bootstraps were, we can never forget that America made them, as much as they made America.

Mark McCormick is executive director of the Kansas African American Museum in Wichita.